The Department accepted applications for medical marijuana dispensary registry certificates during the last two weeks in July. In an impressive effort, the team processed 750 applications within a five-day timeframe. We anticipate issuing 31 dispensary licenses after evaluating the complete and compliant applications. The Medical Marijuana Program staff completed the work efficiently and with great [...]
Last week the Arizona Medical Marijuana Program turned five. Voters passed Proposition 203 in the fall of 2010, making Arizona the fourteenth state to legalize medical marijuana. Within 120 days of Proposition 203 passing, we developed the Medical Marijuana Program and issued the first medical marijuana card to a qualifying patient on April 14, 2011. As of today, there [...]
We got sued again this week regarding our Medical Marijuana Program. This time we’re getting sued because the Plaintiffs think that our 1-year deadline for getting a dispensary up and running is too restrictive. Basically, the Plaintiffs allege that the legal issues that have arisen in response to the White Mountain Health Center, Inc. (a [...]
We have a couple of new projects in the works to ensure that the dispensary system reflects a medical rather than a recreational system. We’re working with Arizona's pharmacy/poison control systems to put together a contract to provide technical assistance and educational materials to the future dispensary medical directors. We’re also putting together a contract [...]
Overall, we ended up receiving 486 medical marijuana dispensary applications among our 126 Community Health Analysis Areas (CHAAs). Twenty-seven of the CHAAs had no applicant at all- leaving 99 Community Health Analysis Areas with at least 1 applicant. Seventy-five of the 99 had more than 1 applicant. Assuming that each of these end up being complete, we’ll [...]
We’ll wrap up our first week of accepting medical marijuana dispensary Registration Certificate applications today. We’ve received about 40 applications so far this week- and our team has been doing an excellent job of reviewing the applications for “Administrative Completeness” this week- so much so that we don’t even have a backlog (yet). Any applications that [...]
We filed our official rules for regulating medical marijuana with the Secretary of State last week. The official rules include a few clarifications that weren’t in the set of unofficial rules that we posted on March 28. The clarifications are reflected in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Rules, Medical Marijuana Act AZ Statutes and the Frequently [...]
We’ll be holding four public comment meetings for the Medical Marijuana Rules next week. Public comment meetings are the part of the Rulemaking process whereby “an agency shall afford persons the opportunity to submit in writing statements, arguments, data and views on the proposed rule, with or without the opportunity to present them orally”. We [...]
By now you probably know that Proposition 203, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act appears to have passed after all (although the final determination will actually be made when the election is certified). The Act identifies the ADHS as the organization that’s responsible for carrying out the provisions of the law. There will be several teams of [...]
Where would the inventory come from if Proposition 203 (the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act) passes? As near as I can tell… it could come from at least 3 places: enclosed cultivation facilities associated with dispensaries; enclosed cultivation facilities operated by caregivers on behalf of cardholders, if the people they care for live 25 miles from [...]
